U.S. News and World Report recently released its rankings of the best graduate schools for 2012 across the most prominent disciplines of study.

These rankings take into account a number of factors, such as the quality of courses offered, peer assessment, recruiter assessment, student selectivity, doctoral student to faculty ratio, research expenditure among several others.

There are also certain discipline specific criteria; for example, in the case of engineering, the proportion of full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty who were members of the National Academy of Engineering in the preceding fall is also considered for the rankings.

Browse through the slideshow here to view the 5 Best Graduate Engineering Schools for 2012.